Urban poor

Urbanization increases the land surface temperature through surface mineralization, adversely affecting vegetation and enhancing the urban heat island (UHI) effect. Global climate change has intensified this warming effect with more frequent and intense heatwaves during hot seasons. While these transformations influence soil temperature, their consequences on drinking water temperature within the drinking water distribution system (DWDS) remains poorly understood. Literature proposes to increase pipe burial depths to mitigate drinking water heating during summer...

BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) has emerged as the leading cause of death from prostate cancer (PCa) in recent decades, bringing a great disease burden worldwide. Men with preexisting CVD have an increased risk for major adverse cardiovascular events when treated with androgen deprivation therapy (ADT). The present study was aimed to explore the prevalence and risk evaluation of CVD among people with newly diagnosed PCa in China. METHODS: Clinical data of newly diagnosed PCa patients were retrospectively collected from 34 centers in China from 2010 to 2022 through convenience sampling...

Concrete sleepers in operation are commonly damaged by various internal and external factors, such as poor materials, manufacturing defects, poor construction, environmental factors, and repeated loads and driving characteristics of trains; these factors affect the vibration response, mode shape, and natural frequency of damaged concrete sleepers. However, current standards in South Korea require only a subjective visual inspection of concrete sleepers to determine the damage degree and necessity of repair or replacement...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: On the trajectory towards universal health coverage in Bhutan, health equity requires policy attention as significant disparities exist between urban and rural health outcomes. This paper examines health services utilization patterns, inequalities and their socio-economic determinants in rural and urban areas and decomposes the factors behind these differences. METHODS: We used the Bhutan Living Standard Survey 2017 to profile health services utilization patterns and equalities...

BACKGROUND: Most forcibly displaced persons are hosted in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). There is a growing urbanization of forcibly displaced persons, whereby most refugees and nearly half of internally displaced persons live in urban areas. This scoping review assesses the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs, outcomes, and priorities among forcibly displaced persons living in urban LMIC. METHODS: Following The Joanna Briggs Institute scoping review methodology we searched eight databases for literature published between 1998 and 2023 on SRH needs among urban refugees in LMIC...

BACKGROUND: Hypertension affects over one billion people globally and is one of the leading causes of premature death. Low- and middle-income countries, especially the sub-Saharan Africa region, bear a disproportionately higher share of hypertension globally. Recent evidence shows a steady shift in the burden of hypertension from more affluent and urban populations towards poorer and rural communities. Our study examined inequalities in self-rated health (SRH) among people with hypertension and whether there is a rural‒urban gap in the health of these patients...

Understanding the nexus of land use and water quality can potentially underline the influences within the groundwater management. The study envisages land use-specific qualitative assessment of the groundwater resources in Ghaziabad district, in western Uttar Pradesh, India. For encountering the relative impacts of land use on the groundwater quality, chemometric analysis has been employed to apportion the pollution sources. The integration of quality parameters, in the information entropy index modeling, has segregated the quality classes and visualized the seasonal suitability trends as per potability standards along with non-carcinogenic health hazard risk assessment (HHRA)...

BACKGROUND: Despite recent advances in medicine, the incidence of pre-term birth is increasing globally. Approximately 70% of neonatal deaths, 36% of infant deaths, and 25-50% of cases of neurological impairment in children can be attributed to pre-term births. Identification of risk factors in women, supervised obstetric care during pregnancy, female empowerment, and patient education are strategies to minimize the burden of preterm deliveries. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A prospective cross-sectional study was conducted over a 1-year period among 658 women in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pramukhswami Medical College, Anand, Gujarat...

INTRODUCTION: Post-stroke depression (PSD) is a common neuropsychiatric complication that affects approximately one-third of stroke patients. The treatment and prognosis of this disease are poor. Socioeconomic status (SES) is closely related to health outcomes; however, only a few previous studies have focused on the association between SES and PSD. Given the substantial population of stroke patients in China, it is crucial to examine the potential risk factors associated with PSD. Conducting studies on this population and investigating the influence of economic conditions can provide valuable guiding theoretical insights into PSD prevention and management...

Urban ecosystem health is the foundation of sustainable urban development. It is important to know the health status of urban ecosystem and its influencing factors for formulating scientific urban development planning. Taking Zibo city as the study area, the indicators were selected from five aspects: ecosystem vigor, structure, resilience, service function and population health to establish an assessment index system of urban ecosystem health. The health level of urban ecosystem was assessed, and its changing trend was analyzed from 2006 to 2018 in Zibo...

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a major contradiction in contemporary urban planning. This is the relationship between the entrepreneurial modes of urban politics that shape contemporary planning practice and the interrelated dynamics of economic precarity and informalisation of low-income communities that exacerbate contagion, and therefore enable pandemic spread. Through a review of literature on the urban dimensions of COVID-19, and on the historical relationship between pandemics and urban planning, we develop a framework for analysing the debates that are emerging around planning approaches to addressing contemporary pandemic risk in low-income, informalised communities...

The COVID-19 pandemic generated a considerable debate in relation to urban density. This is an old debate, originated in mid 19th century's England with the emergence of public health and urban planning disciplines. While popularly linked, evidence suggests that such relationship cannot be generally assumed. Furthermore, urban density has been investigated in a spatially coarse manner (predominantly at city level) and never contextualised with other descriptors of urban form. In this work, we explore COVID-19 and urban form in Greater London, relating a comprehensive set of morphometric descriptors (including built-up density ) to COVID-19 deaths and cases, while controlling for socioeconomic, ethnicity, age and co-morbidity...

This paper combines historical and contemporary sources to examine 'epidemic urban planning' from the first decades of the 20th century through to the present day. It considers how infamous early 20th-century epidemics triggered the development of several urban regulations that profoundly shaped the city's future. To reduce the risk of contagion in bourgeois space, the city began displacing and spatially segregating the urban poor, leading to deprived neighbourhoods in the city's suburbs. The social and urban structure of these deprived, 'vulnerable' neighbourhoods remains to this day...

Human mobility patterns created from mobile phone call detail records (CDRs) can provide an essential resource in data-poor environments to monitor the effects of health outbreaks. Analysis of this data can be instrumental for understanding the movement pattern of populations allowing governments to set and refine policies to respond to community health risks. Building on CDR mobility analysis techniques, this research set out to test whether combining CDR mobility indicators with socio-economic information can illustrate differences between different socio-economic groups' exposure risks to COVID-19...

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to explore sleep health in rural maternal populations through a social-ecological framework and identify risk and protective factors for this population. METHODS: 39 individuals who are mothers of infants or children under the age of 5 years completed an online survey, 35 of which completed a subsequent semi-structured interview. Recruitment was limited to one rural community and was in partnership with community healthcare providers...

BACKGROUND: Nurses are key in identifying and treating in-hospital strokes (IHSs). Delayed treatment times and poor patient outcomes are associated with IHSs. Information is needed on nurses' stroke knowledge and the objective measurement of stroke knowledge using a validated tool. The Acute Stroke Management Questionnaire (ASMaQ) was recently developed to test stroke knowledge of healthcare professionals but has not been used on a nursing-specific population. METHODS: Through online surveying and use of ASMaQ, we will measure stroke knowledge of nurses caring for adult, hospitalized patients in an urban, southeast US health system...

BACKGROUND: Despite the prevalence of sexual assault presentations to emergency departments (ED) in the United States, current access to sexual assault nurse examiners (SANE) and emergency contraception (EC) in EDs is unknown. METHODS: In this study we employed a "secret shopper," cross-sectional telephonic survey. A team attempted phone contact with a representative sample of EDs and asked respondents about the availability of SANEs and EC in their ED. Reported availability was correlated with variables including region, urban/rural status, hospital size, faith affiliation, academic affiliation, and existence of legislative requirements to offer EC...

BACKGROUND: Although exposure to greenness has generally benefited human metabolic health, the association between greenness exposure and metabolic obesity remains poorly studied. We aimed to investigate the associations between residential greenness and obesity phenotypes and the mediation effects of air pollutants and physical activity (PA) level on the associations. METHODS: We used the baseline of the China Multi-Ethnic Cohort (CMEC) study, which enrolled 87,613 adults...

INTRODUCTION: In Nigeria, because of increasing population, urbanization, industrialization, and auto-mobilization, petrol is the most everyday non-edible commodity, and it is the leading petroleum product traded at the proliferating Nigeria's petrol stations (NPSs). However, because of inadequate occupational health and safety (OHS) regulatory measures, working at NPSs exposes petrol station workers (PSWs) to a large amount of hazardous benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene (BTEX) compounds...

BACKGROUND: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection causes a spectrum of clinical outcomes that may be complicated by severe asthma. Antiviral immunity is often compromised in patients with asthma; however, whether this is true for SARS-CoV-2 immunity and children is unknown. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to evaluate SARS-CoV-2 immunity in children with asthma on the basis of infection or vaccination history and compared to respiratory syncytial viral or allergen (eg, cockroach, dust mite)-specific immunity...